Lychee FM is how to counterattack?

(Litchi FM founder Lai Yi Long)

Lai Yilong sitting on the green sofa, he was wearing a white cotton shirt, khaki pants, and sometimes the hole shoes off, a leisurely look. When taking photos, the photographer asked Lai to listen to the music well, choosing DaftPunk, a band that used the media's nickname as its name.

As soon as the music sounded, the originally seemingly quiet Lai Yi-long began to rock with the rhythm and even bang the air guitar. Prior to joining the Internet, the middle-aged man was a standard literary youth who spent a year as a radio DJ and even organized a rock concert in 1999.

A lot of people may send information on the SMS platform "Enterprise ICT" developed by Lai Yilong and may also have used the wap game on his internet.com to write the log ... At that time, the Yi Yilong wear Polo shirt and the old butterfly Lan, an open talk business model, but he is privately in love with vinyl, love to make French desserts.

Private interest and the division of real cause, has been with Lai Yilong, until he started to do mobile APP "lychee FM." His company also moved from Canton CBD to the now-more advanced old villa, with funds from two well-known venture capital firms, Jingwei and Chenxing.

Last October litchi FM just shelves in the Apple store, but now has more than 10 million users. The biggest feature of litchi FM is its easy to record and mix operation, Lai Yi Long's goal is like the APP's interface as written, "Everyone is the anchor."

Radio master in the private sector

The litchi FM interface and user experience is like a real radio station.

Instead of a radio list, it opens a large knob and an analog console. Milky white radio style a kind of warmth of the people's sense of the times, in this era of emphasis on visual design flat, lychee FM stubbornly adhere to the style of three-dimensional simulation, gives the pleasure of fetish.

Lai Yi-long also pay attention to many details, such as recording time, the right side of the roller above the black tape will increase, listen to the program buffer, you will even hear the radio can not find the program when the rustle.

"You see, there is actually a light and shadow here," Lai Yi Long took out his cell phone, pointing to the main interface of the lychee FM, "there is a light from top to bottom, we do not have to deal with the shadow into a simple gray," strike He sent a self-awesome "tut."

Lai Yi-long understanding of light and shadow, from Tanizaki Junichiro "Yin Yin Praise", and playback interface design inspired by Braun's rt20 radio, recording interface inspired by Braun tg60 tape recorder, which are Braun in the 1960s classic product.

Although this concise interface has been questioned by the industry, however, it turns out that users like it. "Because this page can make people quiet," Lai Yilong said.

The lychee FM is very quiet. The listeners can not interact with each other. There is no comment function. They can only communicate privately with the broadcast host. It does not even push the delivery because it will "disturb the user." Its usage scenarios are more in the dead of night, so now the subtitle of litchi FM is "warm heart before bedtime radio."

Lai Yi Long with their high literary literary style, the first threshold in the product experience, easily grasp the user's goodwill and curiosity.

Yu Jian, a veteran of a radio program, first got a TECSUN radio in his junior high school and fell asleep almost daily on the CNR. High school and university he spent in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, before going to bed at night, and roommates to share Wanfeng teacher program, listen to Wanfeng teacher how to call emotional problems people scold a bloody head, feeling full potential.

Then he started to touch the PC-side tornado network radio, and now began to use lychee FM. "Now think of it, Wan Feng Shenma weak burst." Yu Jian said: "In the private sector, people have 'engage in base experimental report radio', 'University Nuwa Tucao', 'awkward awkward radio ...'

Litchi FM attracted many anchors, CCTV host Wang Kai on the lychee FM to the children to tell the story; sugar garlic radio, bad guys FM network podcasts also came; there is that "ladies lounge," a dormitory female college students Feel free to say again joke joke, unbridled laughter Tucao life into the litchi FM to listen to the top ten list.

The current No. 1 radio is "Yesterday's Today's Future," a girl called "Batwoman with Guitar" saying her life and perception.

The latest issue, the first sentence is: "I do not want to design their own destiny, but only this wayward, is to survive for the rest." This expression of infinite depth and audience segmentation on the resonance point is not given by any traditional radio station. The UGC mode on the content of the radio not only achieves the content and user segmentation, but also promotes the long tail advantage of Internet content production and marketing and decentralization.

In fact, some people have actually smelled the possibility in the field of sound. Since 2012, there has been a batch of sound applications in China, and the other is the independent APPs established by some famous network radio anchors such as " Radio "; one is similar to" dragonfly FM ", the traditional radio stations around the translation to the phone, there is no recording function.

The closest to the litchi FM is "Himalayas", but in comparison, the Himalayas are more like a voice of Youku, in terms of the way voices and interface organizations publish, it is more like the sound of microblogging. The recording function is just a simple recording, relatively simple.

"How to make it easier for users to become anchor on mobile radio?" This is the most unique place for litchi FM.

The legendary L

It is hard to imagine that such a high Lai Yi-Long, two years ago also walk through Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, the migrant workers do online community.

Former editor of the "Entrepreneurial" magazine, Shen Yun once wrote an article entitled "W and L," describing the two entrepreneurs who separately represented China's Internet into the "elite Internet" and a "hidden Internet" .

One of the returned to the United States, the cat in Beijing's Zhongguancun, is the domestic play Facebook, Twitter, it is easy to condemnation, the W is Wang Xing.

The other is concerned with migrant workers and ants, and fooling around with them at a midnight snack. They also think that Foxconn is closely linked to itself for the first time - because their contact with the outside world is a mobile phone. He has the responsibility to let them happier. The L is Lai Yi Long, but little-known.

Before the end of 2012, Lai Yi-long project called 183.cn, can be understood as migrant workers Facebook. Many outsiders feel that migrant workers are a group without spending power, but it is not.

Lai Yi-long has pulled a friend, "City Pictorial," former executive editor Levin said, do you know that migrant workers they can not melt into the city can not go back, will buy qq level, or even have millet, in order to gain identity. Lai Yi-long decided to do a real-name community, give them a spiritual home.

In order to get close to this group, he and his colleagues took root in the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen and distributed leaflets daily at the factory door, and the users quickly developed to more than 100,000.

Jingwei and Morningside two venture capital has 183.cn investment. But Levin has found Lai Yi Long's "split."

At that time Lai Yilong wear shorts and slippers, cycling to work, is a typical "reeling," but returned home to put on another set of clothes to start a French dessert. "He may not really like this product," Levin said.

Lai Yi Long vaguely agree, on one occasion, he went to do line activities in Chengdu 183.cn, so late, back to Guangzhou is already 11 o'clock at night. May be the reason of hypoglycemia, Lai Yilong two eyes a black fainted at the airport, when no one woke up, he used loneliness and desolation to describe the feelings at the time.

December 21, 2012 is Maya's so-called "Doomsday." Lai Yilong sit in the home with vinyl records and books to ask themselves, the odds of starting a business failure are great, but are there any things that even failed, still enjoying the process?

He remembered the days of DJing many years ago - at that time he was doing an emotional class show and was late at night after work. Even when he was cycling home through the city during the winter cold nights, his heart was very happy. "Because Is your favorite. "

In the end, the radio is worth more to do. From foreign data, for example, "Soundcloud," determined to be "YouTube in Audio," has grown from one million to tens of millions of users. On the other hand, cameras on mobile phones have microphones that have long been used in other fields , The sound field is relatively blank.

Wei Lai, co-founder of the lychee FM, joined the litchi FM in November last year. He said one of the factors he decided to get in was: "I know that a Cancer man who will be a Macaron must have a quality requirement."

Cooperation so far, the most impressed Lai Yilong is the most detailed impression that he will tangle the interface knob up and down a millimeter, will tangle the analog channel panel in the night or not to have a yellow light effect, a good warm feeling.

Ding Ning and Lai Yilong cooperation for many years, Chief Technology Officer litchi FM Ding Ning obviously felt that, compared to 183.cn stage, Lai Yilong in this project a lot more dominant. He is no longer an outsider who is completely different from the user community.

Commercial value behind the "absurd"

Lai Yilong in litchi FM also has a radio station, called "late night talk song", put Cantonese songs, ranking very front. Litchi FM investors, Jingwei Venture Vice President Ru Haibo is also a loyal audience.

From 183.cn such a "reeling" a company to lychee FM such a literary arts company, compared to Ru Haibo "is worth trying out" to judge, Chen Xin, Chen Xing, Morningside have more concerns: "So Large market span, how can the team turn around?

Latitude and longitude advice is to do a voice version of things that encyclopedic things, but Lai Yilong adhere to their own tone of literature and art, to go emotional and temperature of the line, each must have the anchor behind the radio, VIPs and people exchanges.

The most difficult question is how to determine user needs. Radio podcasting seems to be unpopular in the country, Lai Yilong with reptile software statistics, the Chinese podcast only 4000, active only more than 2000, and the use of mobile phones to listen to, traffic consumption.

Therefore, Lai Yilong took the lean business ideas, small-cost trial and error. The so-called "Lean Startup" comes from the bestseller "TheLean Startup," where product design is no longer subjectively assumed by product managers and designers, and all depends on user needs.

Lai Yilong first done in March last year, WeChat public platform, access product prototype, so that 500 willing to cooperate high-quality podcast program into the background, when users want to listen to songs, the public number issued a "1", the public Will randomly reply to a radio program, this basic function later turned into a knob on the APP.

Two months down more than 50,000 fans, the user growth rate is not as fast as expected. Lai Yilong's team quickly adjusted and launched the "tag cloud" to help listeners find their favorite radio stations, the number of fans increased to 1 million a month later, more than 200,000 daily active users. Investors to see these data rest assured.

But this only proved the number of listeners, how to encourage and help people to become anchor, to produce content is the most creative part.

Levin told Lai Yi-long, you first help me solve recording problems. "To engage in a bunch of hardware inside the computer, external sound card, mixer, then a bunch of lines of a bunch of microphones, after editing and editing, too painful." Users will be scared away

It is also painful for Lai Yi-long to work on the radio. Many people, though talented and have a good voice, can not become anchor announcers for various reasons. Even if they become anchormen, they may not be the ones they want most Do not say what you are trying to do.

However, how to use a mobile phone to record excellent sound quality programs is a technical challenge. This is why APP went online last October. Now on lychee FM, the recording has automatic noise reduction, and music mixing can also be done easily.

At present, there are nearly 300,000 radio stations on the lychee FM. After watching the user growth curve for half a year on the line, Ru Haibo has found that it is fast and healthy in line with the early growth curve of another APP "street-to-street" invested by Jingwei.

Of course, there are also many problems arising from the open product form. Since encouraging the brutal growth of the media can inevitably result in many inferior contents, it also poses a lot of political risks.

Litchi FM radio stations for review is divided into many levels, according to the radio station to register the keywords to be divided. "There are some stable style of radio, the content is very stable, like a mother telling a story, you do not need to have a very tight trial of each issue." Lai Yi Long told reporters: "We have a dozen part-time review team, To listen to each section of some radio stations, it is very mature in China if it needs to be outsourced to several hundred people.

In the group of more than 40 people in the lychee FM, two-thirds of the staff are technicians. Those who often mock themselves as "IT laborers" often eat afternoon tea and have an aunt for lunch. Lai Yilong even has vacated the top floor Space for colleagues to take a nap. "The most important thing to do in this trip!"

He encouraged employees to travel, he is also a travel expert. Many of his friends and colleagues call him Marco, his English name for himself, "because of the association with Marco Polo."

As for the profit model, Lai Yilong has not thought about it, because he believes that as long as there are users and users like the product, the business model is bound to be found.

He likes to give an example of WeChat, "At that time, he did not expect Wechat to pay for it." Lai Yilong currently has only a rough idea, the general direction of the content is free, may be to do fan economy. "We did not find it particularly urgent to make a profit." He put a little tomato into his mouth, the fruit of his company's afternoon tea every day.

On the lychee FM, there is a radio program called Liang Dong and famous economic observer Wu Fan who used to call "Dong Wu Relativity Theory". Wu Bo-fan's speech in the program is like a wish to listen specifically to Lai Yi-long language.

"Information is worthless in many cases. What's the value? It's the channel of information." "Winter Wu relativity theory" undoubtedly opened up a meaningful "channel of information communication" in this extremely inflated information society. The litchi FM is spotted with the sound as the value of the information channel.